Geological influences from subsurface geologic rock formations can impact the design and successful completion of oil, gas, and/or other type of hydrocarbon-based fuel extraction wells. Knowledge of geologic rock formation parameters can be helpful in designing and implementing development projects that include determining wellbore stability design, fracture modeling, and production optimization. For instances, collecting well-related information, such as information found in well logs, improves an operator's understanding of the subsurface geologic rock formation's mechanical properties, anisotropy behavior, and stress orientation. Operators may use the well-related information to plan and design the different phases of a well, for example, efficiently planning fracturing operations for a well. Specifically, subsurface stress and fractures that affect fluid flow may naturally occur in underground areas where oil and gas operators may be interested in recovering hydrocarbon resources. By determining the variations in naturally occurring stress fields, operators may be able to develop and optimize hydraulic fracture designs.
Naturally occurring subsurface stress occur typically because of the resulting weight of overlying rock layers and/or stress caused from rock formation confinement. The stresses experienced at the subsurface level are typically compressive, anisotropic, and nonhomogeneous. In other words, underground geologic rock formations typically experience compressive stresses on the rock formations that are not equal and the magnitude of the stress is based on direction. When an operator excavates the underlying rock formation, such as drilling a wellbore through the subsurface, the excavation process routinely alters the stress fields of the rock formations near the excavation site. In particular, an operator's drilling of a wellbore notably alters the near-wellbore stress fields when compared to the far wellbore stress field. As a result, a variety of acoustic downhole measuring tools that an operator may use to measure and provide data concerning the wellbore may produce data that becomes distorted because of the altered near-wellbore stress fields. Characterizing the effects of the altered near-wellbore stress fields may be helpful in accurately analyzing recorded downhole acoustic tool.